King of the B's

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“I’ve always liked fast pace in films,” says Roger Corman, “I find that when I’m working rapidly, I generate within myself a kind of nervous energy that may well influence the cast–though I always hope that primarily it will influence the crew.”

If you enjoy B movies, you and your family can find many DVDs and books @ your library that feature the legendary career of Roger Corman, who has produced and directed hundreds of movies.

Corman, who is in his mid-80s, was honored at a recent Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science Governors Ball with an honorary Oscar for his “unparalleled ability to nurture aspiring filmmakers by providing an environment that no film school could match.”

Corman turned independent film on its ear over the last five decades, making entertaining, low-budget horror films, comedies and dramas, often in less than two weeks, wrote the Los Angeles Times.

“His legendary ability to stretch a dollar allowed him to swiftly conceive and create period films and sci-fi epics on budgets that wouldn’t cover the food costs on a modern studio shoot. When he had more to work with, however, Corman made the most of it: The string of Edgar Allan Poe-inspired horror films he produced at American International Pictures in the early 1960s featuring Vincent Price have been hailed as artistic gems,” according to the Academy.

He is admired for the many talented film makers who he gave jobs to early in their careers: How about this list: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, James Cameron, John Sayles, Monte Hellman, Paul Bartel, Jonathan Kaplan, and Curtis Hanson. Avatar director James Cameron said, "I trained at the Roger Corman Film School." The British director Nicolas Roeg served as the cinematographer on The Masque of the Red Death.

Ron Howard, whose first film, Grand Theft Auto, was a Corman production, recalled Corman telling him, “If you continue to do a good job for me on this picture, I can promise you, you’ll never have to work for me again.”

Respected critic David Thomson describes Corman as “The cheerful, cut-price producer of shock, schlock, beach movies, biker dramas and Edgar Allan Poe stories, dripping in blood.”

And it wasn’t just directors who benefited from Corman’s movie making style. Actors who obtained their career breaks working for Corman include Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, Talia Shire, Robert De Niro, and David Carradine.

Corman told the Los Angeles Times he felt unsure working with actors, so he enrolled in an acting class. It was in that class he met a young Jack Nicholson, whom he cast in 1958's The Cry Baby Killer. "I simply felt he was not only the best actor in the class and although he never made a film he was better than most of the actors I had been working with."

Corman, who was born in Detroit, had to make his own way in Hollywood and started as a messenger at 20th Century Fox, He received a story credit for Highway Dragnet (1954), which he also co-produced, and got his first producer credit on The Fast and the Furious (1955). “Over the next five decades, virtually every type of genre film arrived in theaters and drive-ins with the name Roger Corman attached as producer—and often director as well. His colorful titles, often set before a script was written, promised much to youthful audiences seeking chills, thrills and spills, and the films themselves delivered without pretension,” according to the Academy.

After many commercial successes, Corman was able to expand his operations as an independent distributor and his New World Pictures released significant films by Ingmar Bergman, François Truffaut, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa and others. Corman continued producing, however, and among the cult classics fondly remembered from this period are Death Race 2000 (1975), Piranha (1978) and Rock ’n’ Roll High School (1979). Filmmakers who received early opportunities on New World productions include, director Joe Dante (Piranha), composer James Horner (The Lady in Red), film editor Mark Goldblatt (Humanoids from the Deep), producers Jon Davison (Hollywood Boulevard) and writer John Sayles (The Lady in Red).

Check out these recent interviews with Roger Corman:
Shock til you Drop and Bright Lights Film Journal.

Did you know?

• In a 10-year period, his independent production and distribution company New World Pictures released three Academy Award-winners in the Foreign Language Film category: Amarcord, Dersu Uzala, and The Tin Drum.
• He directed the acclaimed 1962 drama The Intruder starring William Shatner, the first film to tell the story of the integration of schools in the South.
• In 1967, Corman produced and directed The Trip, written by Jack Nicholson and starring Peter Fonda, which began the “psychedelic” film craze of the late 1960s.
• He set the acknowledged record for fastest professional 35mm feature film shoot with the original version of The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which took two days and one night to wrap. He made several other films that took less than a week to shoot.
• When shooting on location, Corman would often film scenes for two movies at the same time to make the most of the location.
• A longstanding joke in Hollywood was that Corman could negotiate the production of a film on a pay phone, finance it with the money left in the change slot and then shoot the whole film in the phone booth.

Here are some of Corman’s best known films. This list was prepared by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:
Frankenstein Unbound (1990, Director, Producer)

• Galaxy of Terror (1981, Producer)
• Death Race 2000 (1975, Producer)
• Big Bad Mama (1974, Producer)
• Boxcar Bertha (1972, Producer)
• The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967, Director, Producer)
• The Trip (1967, Director, Producer)
• The Wild Angels (1966, Director, Producer)
• The Masque of the Red Death (1964, Director, Producer)
• The Tomb of Ligeia (1965, Director, Producer)
• Dementia 13 (1963, Producer)
• X (1963, Director, Producer)
• The Haunted Palace (1963, Director, Producer)
• The Terror (1963, Director, Producer)
• The Raven (1963, Director, Producer)
• The Pit and the Pendulum (1961, Director, Producer)
• The Little Shop of Horrors (1960, Director, Producer)
• The Wasp Woman (1959, Director, Producer)
• Teenage Cave Man (1958, Director, Producer)
• The Fast and the Furious (1955, Producer)

Books:
How I Made a Million Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime
By Roger Corman

Roger Corman: Metaphysics on a Shoestring
by Alain Silver, James Ursini

The Films of Roger Corman: Brilliance on a Budget
by Ed Naha

Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers
by Beverly Gray

The Films of Roger Corman: ‘Shooting My Way out of Trouble’
by Alan G. Frank

Roger Corman
by Gary Morris

Also of Interest:

Roger Corman biography at New Horizons Pictures
Roger Corman bibliography
Roger Corman at the Internet Movie Database

Photo credit: © A.M.P.A.S (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)